This rule identifies potential Ciphator-related activity, a low-severity indicator often associated with specific malware strains or obfuscated payloads that may evade standard signature-based detections. Proactively hunting for this pattern in Azure Sentinel allows the SOC team to uncover stealthy footholds or early-stage infections before they escalate into more complex lateral movement or data exfiltration events.
rule Ciphator_46: PEiD
{
strings:
$a = { 93 93 E8 E4 0C 54 4C 4F 53 53 20 65 72 72 6F 72 05 23 00 00 00 00 00 00 8C C0 2E 31 06 18 0D B8 00 0D CD 21 33 C0 8E D8 66 0F B7 C8 0E 8F 06 06 00 68 DF 0C 8F 06 04 00 8C C8 8E D8 8E C0 B9 44 06 BE D8 0C 8B FE 2E 8B 16 14 00 FD CD 01 E2 FC }
condition:
$a at pe.entry_point
}This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:
This rule contains 1 string patterns in its detection logic.
Scenario: A DevOps engineer runs a custom Python script using the cryptography or pycrypto library to encrypt sensitive configuration files (e.g., secrets.json) before committing them to a Git repository. The script imports specific cipher modules that match the YARA signature for Ciphator 46, triggering the alert during the build pipeline.
python or py and the parent process is a build tool like jenkins, gitlab-runner, or azure-pipelines-agent. Additionally, exclude file paths under C:\builds\ or /home/runner/work/.Scenario: An IT administrator uses a legitimate backup utility like Veeam Backup & Replication or Commvault to perform incremental backups. These tools often use proprietary or standard AES-256 encryption for backup chains, which may exhibit memory patterns or file headers that overlap with the Ciphator 46 YARA rule, especially if the backup agent is running on a domain controller.
veeamagent.exe, commvaultagent.exe, or backupagent.exe and the service name matches known backup services. Also, exclude files located in standard backup directories such as C:\Program Files\Veeam\ or C:\Commvault\.Scenario: A security team deploys a new endpoint detection and response (EDR) agent or a digital certificate management tool (like Venafi or ManageEngine) that uses internal encryption routines for certificate pinning or secure channel establishment. The YARA rule may match the memory footprint of these agents during their initial handshake or key exchange processes.